NASA Webb space telescope images: The National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) revealed three more images taken from the James Webb Space Telescope along with data of a distant planet’s atmosphere. The first image revealed showed the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 also known as Webb’s First Deep Field. The image is a composite made from different images taken at different wavelengths. It was made using images taken with the Near-Infrared Camera(NIRCam).
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NASA then revealed images of the following targets: Carina Nebula, WASP-96 b (spectrum data), Southern Ring Nebula and Stephen’s Quintet. High-resolution versions of the image are now available on NASA’s website. The spectrum data of WASP-96B revealed the presence of water vapour on the distant exoplanet for the first time.
The image of the Southern Ring Nebula captured the “final performance” of a dying star. The image of Stephan’s Quintet shed new light on the evolution of galaxies and black holes with the galaxies in a “galactic dance” or cosmic proportions with each other.
NASA finished the livestream with a stunning high-resolution image of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula called NGC 3324. The image showed what looks like “mountains” and “valleys” glistening in the sunlight, but were actually features that were 7 light-years high. The hotbed of star formation showed the relationship between dust and gas clouds and blisteringly hot young stars. Read less
NASA has revealed the first set of images taken using its powerful James Webb Space Telescope. The images are of the following targets: Carina Nebula, WASP-96 b (spectrum), Southern Ring Nebula and Stephan’s Quintet. The telescope has a 6.5-meter large mirror, that captures light from the objects it is targetting.
NASA has pulled back the curtains on some of the most scientifically important images in recent history, revealing the universe's beauty at a previously unprecedented scale. From the blisteringly hot birthplaces of stars and the "cosmic dance" of galaxies and black holes to the last gasps of a dying star and the presence of water on a distant exoplanet, the images had it all. But here are 5 things that you need to look for in the images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The last and final image released by NASA shows a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula called NGC 3324, and its “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars. Captured in infrared for the first time by Webb, the new image shows previously invisible areas of star birth.
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The image resembles craggy mountains on a moonlit evening. Actually, it is the edge of the giant gaseous cavity within the region of the nebula and some of the tallest “peaks” in the nebula are around 7 light-years high. The cavernous area in the image was carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely hot young stars located in the centre of this “bubble,” above the area shown in the image.
This young star’s intense ultraviolet radiation is slowly eroding it away. Some pillars tower about the glowing wall of gas, resisting the star’s radiation. What looks like steam rising from the “mountains” is actually hot ionised gas and hot dust streaming away from the nebula because of radiation.
The fourth image is an enormous mosaic of Stephan’s Quintet and the largest image taken by Webb to date. It covers over 150 million pixels and is constructed from 1,000 separate image files. The image shows the dramatic impact of huge shockwaves as one of the galaxies smashes through the cluster. It also shows a black hole in the Quintet at a detail never seen before.
Even though they are called a quintet, only four of the galaxies are actually close together and caught in a “cosmic dance”. The leftmost galaxy is well in the foreground in comparison with the other four. It is about 40 million light-years away from the earth while the other four are about 290 million light-years away. But even that distance is fairly close in cosmic terms.
Studying such ‘nearby’ galaxies like these helps scientists better understand the dynamics in a more distant universe. Such tightly-packed groups might have been more common in the early period of the universe when their superheated material may have fueled highly energetic black holes called quasars. Even as we see the quintet today, the topmost galaxy harbours an active supermassive black hole 24 million times the mass of the Sun.
The third image is a near-infrared image of the Southern Ring Nebula or the “Eight-burst Nebula,” a planetary Nebula surrounding a dying star.
The stars at the centre are prominent in the image. from Webb’s NIRCam on the left while the image from Webb’s MIRI on the right shows for the first time that the second dimmer star is surrounded by dust. The brighter star is younger and will probably project its own planetary nebula in the future.
As the pair orbits each other, they “stir the pot” of gas and dust, causing asymmetrical patterns. Each shell of gas in the image represents the time when the fainter star lost some of its mass. The widest shells of gas toward the outer areas of the image were ejected earlier. The ones closest to the star are the most recent. Scientists can look into the history of the system by tracing these ejections
The second image is a spectrum of the gas giant planet WASP-96b, located nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth. This is the first spectrum of an exoplanet taken by Webb. It reveals wavelengths that haven’t been revealed before. The spectrum reveals tell-tale signatures of water vapour on the planet. The planet is closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun.
This is the most detailed near-infrared transmission spectrum of an exoplanet atmosphere captured to date. It also covers an exceptionally wide range of wavelengths including visible red light and a portion of the spectrum that has not previously been accessible from other telescopes.
This part of the wavelength spectrum is very sensitive to water as well as key life molecules like oxygen, methane and carbon dioxide. These are not immediately obvious in the WASP-96b spectrum and could potentially be detected in future observations of other exoplanets made by Webb
The first image from the Webb has been shared from NASA’s Goddard Space Centre and is the same deep field image of SMACS 0723 shared earlier. Some of the cosmic objects in the image are pictured as they were 13.1 billion years ago. Webb took 4 days to create the image, compared to the ten days taken by Hubble for a lower-resolution image.The telescope’s NIRCam has brought distant galaxies into sharp focus, letting us see tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features. While viewing the youngest galaxies in the image, we are looking back in time to within a billion years after the big bang.Another special feature is the prominent arcs in the field. The powerful gravitational fields of galaxy clusters bend light rays from distant galaxies behind them, causing an effect known as gravitational lensing. Stars have been captured with prominent diffraction spikes because they appear brighter at shorter wavelengths.
NASA will soon begin releasing the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope, offering never-seen-before views of distant cosmic objects with wavelengths of light never seen before. NASA will be releasing the images in its livestream above but you can also view them at this link.
The telescope’s unprecedented sensitivity to infrared light will help astronomers understand how galaxies assemble over billions of years. It will be able to see through dust clouds, where stars and planetary systems are formed. Further, it will be able to study the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets.
Its science instruments include the NEar-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec, the Mid-infrared Instrument (MIRI) and the Near-Infrared Slitless Spectrograph/Fine Guidance Sensor (NIRISS/FGS). Information from these instruments will contribute towards helping scientists answer age-old questions like how the universe began and how it evolved to what it is now.
To put the Webb telescope’s size into context, it is as tall as a three-storey building and as long as a tennis court. In fact, it was so big that it had to be folded like origami so that it will fit inside the rocket that it was launched on. It unfolded once it was deployed, starting with its sunshield first.
Apart from science missions that are already planned for the Webb telescope, there is also a chance that it could help make unanticipated and unexpected discoveries in the future. For example, scientists did not know about dark energy when the Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990. But now, it is one of the most exciting fields in astrophysics after its existence was confirmed using Hubble observations.
Before it began its scientific work, the Webb telescope underwent a six-month preparation period when its instruments were calibrated. But toward the end of May, it was struck by a small meteoroid, which knocked one of the telescope’s gold-plated mirrors out of alignment.
Despite this, Webb was still “performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements.” Of course, mission scientists had to make delicate readjustments to the impacted mirror segment to help cancel out any distortion that may have been caused by the impact. The event had no effect on the schedule to release the first images of the telescope.
Every object that is being observed with the James Webb Telescope is light-years away. This means that we are observing these objects as they used to be years ago. For example, the Southern Ring Nebula is 2,000 light-years away, which means that the image we see of it today will depict how it looked 2,000 years ago. The image of SMACS 0723, which was released earlier by NASA and the US President, shows us the cluster of galaxies as it was 4.6 billion years ago.
NASA will collect spectrum data of some of the faintest objects ever observed using the James Webb Space Telescope. WASP-96b, a massive planet located nearly 1,150 light-years away from Earth, is one such target. Discovered in 2014, the gas giant has half the mass of Jupiter and orbits its star every three to four days, meaning that it has super-hot surface temperatures. WASP-96b is almost entirely cloud-free and scientists predict that it has an abundance of Sodium.
Webb will also be targeting Stephan’s Quinter, a group of five galaxies where four are locked in a “cosmic dance” of repeated close encounters. The quintet was famously one of the first compact galaxy groups ever discovered. It is about 290 million light-years away from us in the direction of the Pegasus constellation.
In this Hubble image, you can see the Southern Ring Nebula, which serves as another one of Webb’s first targets. It is also referred to as the “Eight-Burst” nebula because its shape resembles that of the number 8 when you look at it through a telescope. The Southern Ring Nebula is what is referred to as a planetary nebula because it is a cloud of gas and dust surrounding a dying star. The Eight-Burst nebula is 2,000 light-years away from our planet and has a diameter of nearly half a light-year.
This Hubble image shows Carina Nebula, which is one of the first targets of the James Webb Space Telescope. Carina is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in our sky and is home to many massive stars that are many times the size of the Sun. Nebulae are often referred to as “stellar nurseries” because these clouds of gas and dust are where stars are formed.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team
Webb’s first image has already been revealed by NASA and the space agency will unveil more images on its official stream starting at 8 PM IST. But while that happens, you can track the space observatory’s location in real-time. NASA’s “Where is Webb?” tracker will show you its most recent available position in a 3D model of the solar system.
The first image of the universe taken using the James Webb Space telescope has been revealed by US President Joe Biden and NASA. More images are awaited later today. The first image is of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 and NASA calls it the deepest and sharpest infrared of the distant universe taken till date.